Jennifer Formichelli wrote:


> Well, not secrets exactly, but confession.

A confession that was expected never to reach anyone living.
It was to be a secret to us.


> This is not, I believe, Eliot's translation.

Probably not, but he could have left the quote in the Italian but
provided someone's translation.  I don't think he bothered to say what
translation(s) he was using.


>> In the draft of Prufrock Eliot used the Purgatorio quotation as the
>> epigraph (see "Inventions of the March Hare," 39, 41).

> Yes, he did. He also expunged it.

For something that he rather have had us read.  But yet the draft's
epigraph must have had some bearing on the poem.


> And I say again, it is not Eliot, but precisely what Eliot did not
> write, his epigraph, which leads you to these thoughts. Intriguing.

If it is intriguing that Eliot's epigraphs lead **me** to associate
the epigraphs with the feelings in the poem then what do you think
of all the literate, well-educated professionals writing countless
criticisms and interpretations that request/direct the readers to
do so?

Regards,
    Rick Parker